Chicago police Cmdr. Paul Bauer was shot and killed Tuesday afternoon in a stairwell outside the Thompson Center in the Loop. On Wednesday, prosecutors charged Shomari Legghette with murder in Bauer's death.
The timeline of events that began shortly...

A plaque outside She-Nannigans bar on Division Street pays tribute to the rabble-rousers who violated Chicago’s old “barmaids ordinance,” a law in place during the 1960s that prohibited women from tending bar unless they were related to the bar owner.
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After more than four years of waiting, the South Shore neighborhood is one step closer to having a grocery store in the space of a former Dominick’s.
On Friday afternoon, the mayor’s office issued a news release declaring that Shop & Save Market signed a...

No one should be surprised Chicago is on Amazon’s list of 20 potential locations for HQ2, its coveted second headquarters.
It would have been astounding — not to mention embarrassing — if the city didn’t make the cut.
Nonetheless, Amazon’s lineup...

Chicago played host to a record 55.2 million visitors last year. That's the estimate from City Hall and marks a 2.5 percent increase from the then-record 53.8 million people that visited in 2016. The figures are a clear indication that Chicago is becoming...

The spike in violent crime that has plagued Chicago since 2016 has even more gravity when viewed in comparison with six decades of homicides in Chicago. Since 1957, the city has had homicide totals of 700 or more nearly half the time, 27 of 60 years,...

One of the last industrial facilities in the fast-gentrifying Clybourn Corridor looks more like a set from "Mad Max" than the glittering, tech-friendly utopia portrayed in videos promoting Chicago for Amazon's second headquarters.
Nearly every day,...

The head of Chicago's public schools system on Friday stepped down from his job amid allegations by the system's inspector general that he engaged in a "full-blown cover-up" to block an ethics investigation. Forrest Claypool, who was appointed as CEO of...

The successful movie director Andrew Davis — whom everyone calls Andy — spent more than two summer months back where he came from, which is Chicago, doing something he had never done here or elsewhere, which was hugging and squeezing and kissing his first...

The Chicago Park District is proposing a property tax increase to help pay for an expansion of recreation programs as part of its proposed $462.3 million budget, released online late Wednesday, the afternoon before Thanksgiving.
The Park District’s...

He won two presidential elections and a Nobel Peace Prize, but on Wednesday the former leader of the free world performed the unthinkable — he made Cook County jury duty exciting.
Prospective juror Barack Obama, who ultimately was not chosen to sit on...

Chicago Alderman Willie Cochran collapsed during a city council budget hearing at City Hall. Paramedics were called to the scene on Thursday. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson was expected to testify about the police department's 2018 budget....

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday said in the wake of the Las Vegas attack that Chicago has security plans in place for the upcoming Chicago Marathon and Cubs playoff appearance at Wrigley Field.
The mayor said local emergency response officials have been...

In a ruling with national impact, a federal judge in Chicago on Friday blocked the Trump administration's rules requiring so-called sanctuary cities to cooperate with immigration agents in order to get a public safety grant.
U.S. District Judge Harry...

Chicago is in the running for Amazon's second corporate headquarters and local CEOs could be asking themselves "Why should I help a fierce competitor?"
It's a tough question, one that pits a CEO's corporate interests against broader community concerns of...

Ahead of a possible 2019 re-election bid, Mayor Rahm Emanuel continues to rely on key campaign donors who have received City Hall benefits, ranging from contracts and zoning approvals to appointments and personal endorsements from the mayor, the Chicago...

The four Democratic and Republican legislative leaders said Thursday that they have reached a tentative agreement with Gov. Bruce Rauner on a plan to fund schools, though the sides warn a deal is not yet final.
The leaders recently held several...

A graphic novel about city planning would seem to be destined to gather dust. If it didn't turn out to be a pedantic yawner of a book, it might be a simplistic good-guy-versus-bad-guy affair, its content as cartoonish as its drawings. ZAP! POW! BUILDER AS...

If you had to guess who owns the quintessential Chicago license plate, you would probably guess wrong.
A swaggering alderman? A rich contractor? The head of a city department fat with patronage?
Wrong.
If, however, you had to guess what the...